U.S. Army identifies Green Beret killed in Afghanistan
The U.S. Army has identified a 41-year-old Green Beret who was killed by small arms fire in Afghanistan.
U.S. Army Special Operations Command spokesman Loren Bymer said in a statement that Sgt. 1st Class Jeremy W. Griffin died Sept. 16. He was from Greenbrier, Tenn.
Bymer said that Griffin was engaged in combat operations in Afghanistan’s Wardak Province when he was killed.
Col. Owen G. Ray, commander, 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne), said that Griffin was a “warrior” as well as a “respected and loved Special Forces Soldier.”
Griffin joined the Army in 2004 and was on his fourth combat deployment when he died. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star Medal and Purple Heart. AP
Ohio senators propose renaming NASA site for Neil Armstrong
Ohio’s U.S. senators want Congress to rename a NASA research facility in Ohio after astronaut Neil Armstrong.
Republican Rob Portman and Democrat Sherrod Brown introduced legislation Sept. 12 to honor the Ohio native by renaming the NASA Plum Brook Station in Sandusky.
Portman says he raised the idea with Armstrong in 2012, a year before Armstrong’s death. The senator says Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, wasn’t comfortable with the attention it would bring.
Portman says he has since spoken with NASA and Armstrong’s family and they support renaming the facility.
Brown says it would be a fitting tribute given Armstrong’s contributions as a test pilot and astronaut. AP
Lockheed Martin to base hypersonics program in Alabama
Lockheed Martin says it will base its hypersonics weapons program in north Alabama, where about 275 new jobs will be added over the next three years.
The company held a ceremony Sept. 16 in Courtland, where two new buildings will be constructed to serve as a manufacturing and management home for work focusing on super high-speed weapons.
A statement from the Maryland-based Lockheed Martin says 72 new jobs will be located in Courtland, and 200 positions will be added in Huntsville. Additional growth is expected.
Lockheed Martin already employs about 2,000 people in Alabama, many of them in the high-tech industries near Huntsville’s Redstone Arsenal and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
Hypersonic weapons are generally defined as those that travel more than five times the speed of sound. AP
FAA chief says he’ll test Boeing’s MAX changes this week
The nation’s top aviation regulator says he plans to go into a flight simulator and personally test changes that Boeing is making to the grounded 737 Max.
Stephen Dickson also said Sept. 16 that he expects Boeing to submit its safety analysis of changes to the plane “in the coming days.”
Dickson is the new head of the Federal Aviation Administration, which will decide whether U.S. airlines can resume flying the 737 Max. The FAA grounded the Max in March after the second of two crashes that together killed 346 people.
Boeing hopes the plane will be back in service early in the October-through-December quarter.
Dickson is a former 737 pilot and Delta Air Lines executive. He told CNBC he plans to test the Max in a simulator in Seattle this week. AP